KSU spends $60,000 to defend censorship

KENTUCKY -- While the frustration of waiting for a ruling by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit in the Kentucky State University yearbook and newspaper adviser censorship case continues, lawyers for the school may be the only ones still smiling.

Documents obtained from the university by the Student Press Law Center indicate that the university had -- as of April 22 -- spent more than $60,000 to defend against charges that it had illegally confiscated the student yearbook and transferred the student media adviser to a secretarial position for refusing to censor the student newspaper.

Clery Act violators number more than 300

WASHINGTON, D.C. -- The Department of Education has found that about 340 colleges have violated the federal Campus Security Act since the law was enacted in 1991, according to the national watchdog organization Security on Campus.

Few schools have been punished, however, for failing to comply with the law, renamed the Jeanne Clery Act in 1998, requiring schools to publish annual crime statistics and make their police or security logs open to the public.

Students criticize speech policies

The board of regents at New Mexico State University passed a new speech policy in October following a lawsuit filed against the university by a graduate student who was arrested for refusing to hand over leaflets to a campus police officer.

Sean Rudolph was distributing fliers protesting the university's free-speech policies when he was arrested for obstructing an officer on Sept.

Ore. court of appeals upholds student’s expulsion for underground publication

OREGON -- The attorney for a student editor expelled for publishing an underground newspaper is taking the case as high as it will go in the state court system, hoping to have the student's punishment overturned and his disciplinary record wiped clean.

Jonathan Hoffman, attorney for Chris Pangle, filed a petition for review with the Oregon Supreme Court Nov.

Chancellor protects campus paper’s funding

WISCONSIN -- The chancellor of the University of Wisconsin at Oshkosh intervened in a dispute between the student association and the student newspaper in October, preventing the association from stripping the newspaper of its funding.

University Chancellor Richard Wells told the Oshkosh Student Association it could not take away the Advance-Titan's student organization status, thus allowing the paper to keep its funding.

Principal threatens underground editors

KANSAS -- School officials and two Lawrence High School seniors with a bent for satire reached a compromise that will allow the boys to keep publishing their underground newspaper -- but only with their principal reviewing it first.

Co-editors Lee Dunfield and Brad Quellhorst said they could live with the September deal, which requires them to submit proposed editions of Low Budget to principal Mike Patterson for approval.